In new research, Professor Pickard and his colleagues found that predicting the upper limit of the speed of sound is dependent on two dimensionless fundamental constants: the fine structure constant and the proton-to-electron mass ratio. “They’re also of interest to materials scientists because sound waves are related to important elastic properties including the ability to resist stress.” “For example, seismologists use sound waves initiated by earthquakes deep in the Earth interior to understand the nature of seismic events and the properties of Earth composition.” “Sound waves in solids are already hugely important across many scientific fields,” said co-author Professor Chris Pickard, a physicist in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge and the Advanced Institute for Materials Research at Tohoku University. However, until now it was not known whether sound waves also have an upper speed limit when traveling through solids or liquids. Sound waves can travel through different mediums, such as air or water, and move at different speeds depending on what they’re traveling through.įor example, they move through solids much faster than they would through liquids or gases, which is why you’re able to hear an approaching train much faster if you listen to the sound propagating in the rail track rather than through the air.Īlbert Einstein’s theory of special relativity sets the absolute speed limit at which a wave can travel which is the speed of light, and is equal to about 300,000 km per second (186,000 miles per second). Waves, such as sound or light waves, are disturbances that move energy from one place to another. show that a combination of two dimensionless fundamental constants results in a new dimensionless constant that provides the upper bound for the speed of sound in condensed phases.
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